大象传媒

Arthouse meets disaster in this claustrophobic tale of a terrorist attack on Los Angeles. Unemployed musician Brad (Rory McCochrane) is bumming around his hillside home when the radio announces a series of bomb blasts. It emerges that these are 'dirty bombs', designed to spread a lethal virus across the city. Following emergency instructions, Brad clingfilms himself into the house, only for his girlfriend Lexi (Mary McCormack) to arrive on the doorstep, desperate for shelter. But should he let her in?

Working with a minimal special effects budget, director Chris Gorak brilliantly evokes the terror and confusion of an attack on a major city with nothing more than radio broadcasts and a few fuzzy shots of a smoking skyline. The first half hour of Right At Your Door, which focuses on Brad's panicked attempts to contact his girlfriend, are intensely gripping and believable. Thereafter, the action settles down a little as our hero and heroine trade arguments from either side of a plastic sheet. Neither character is especially pleasant company, to be honest, but who would be under these circumstances?

"IMPRESSIVE, IF RELENTLESSLY DEPRESSING"

The post-apocalyptic atmosphere, all silence and falling ashes, is beautifully achieved, transforming an ordinary suburb into an alien but utterly plausible environment. There's a wonderful sense of creeping paranoia, as it becomes clear that the emergency services (done up in scary Darth Vader germ suits, natch) might not have our couple's best interests at heart.

It's an impressive, if relentlessly depressing, piece of work. But it loses a star for the much-hyped big twist ending, a silly Roald Dahl-style switcheroo that is both structurally pointless and makes a nonsense of Brad's terrible dilemma.

Right At Your Door is released in UK cinemas on Friday 8th September 2006.